All Fall Down. Mark Edwards

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      12

      Paul waited for Harley to come back, hoping to eavesdrop further on his conversation, but when Harley returned he had put his phone away. Paul heard him go into his room and shut the door.

      Charles Mangold. Since Stephen’s death, finding Mangold had become an obsession for Paul. He felt like that Nazi hunter – what was his name? – who had sworn he wouldn’t rest until they were all brought to justice. But Paul’s efforts had been stymied because his criminal record meant he could only track Mangold online. But now he’d finally been allowed into the US he could pursue leads that would have been impossible over the internet.

      He could almost feel Stephen watching him, urging him on, saying, ‘Do it, Paul. Find him. For me.’

      He paced the room. First step would be to get online, look up Mangold and see if his name had appeared anywhere recently. That night at the lab, when Gaunt had been convinced he was invincible, and that Kate and Paul would never get out alive, Gaunt had let slip that Mangold lived in Utah. Yet Paul had never been able to find any online trace of an address in that state. His internet searches had established that Mangold had headed a company called Medi-Lab, which was based in a small city called Sagebrush, to the west of LA. There had been no fresh results in the last two years.

      He grabbed his phone and turned on data roaming but, as he’d expected, there was no 3G connection here so he couldn’t get online via the mobile network, nor any wi-fi. He pulled on his jeans, socks and shoes and exited the room as quietly as he could, creeping along the front of the building, gratefully breathing in the cooler air.

      At reception, the skinny girl with the panther tattoo had been replaced by a considerably less skinny man with a grey beard and bags under his eyes. He turned his basset hound-like gaze on Paul.

      ‘Hi. The girl on reception earlier said there was wi-fi available?’ Paul realised that he was whispering. He cleared his throat and spoke up. ‘Is that right?’

      ‘Only in the lobby. Ten bucks an hour.’

      Outrageous. But he had little choice. He took out his wallet, thankful that he’d got some money changed at Heathrow, and handed over a ten-dollar bill. Armed with the password, he sneaked back to his room, noting that the light inside Harley’s room was off. It was 1 a.m. now and only the occasional car glided past on the freeway. He grabbed his MacBook Air and headed back down to reception. There, perched in an uncomfortably shiny plastic armchair in the corner, he connected to the wi-fi. The first thing he did was Google Charles Mangold and filter the results to the most recent.

      Nothing he hadn’t seen before.

      To refresh his memory, he went into a folder he had set up to save the scant details he had previously discovered about Mangold when searching at home.

      The most useful item came from the online archive of the Ventura County Star. Paul read it over now, probably for the tenth time since he had first found it. The words never failed to make the hairs stand up on the back of his neck.

      Charles Mangold was the founder and president of Medi-Lab Research, a company based in Sagebrush that specialised in research into, and manufacture of, antiviral drugs. The company was heavily involved in research into HIV, as well as research into the common cold and flu viruses. Medi-Lab Research was one of Ventura County’s largest employers until a significant health scandal in 1991, when it was accused of endangering the lives of its employees and the wider community due to ‘safety violations’ and, more seriously, ‘misuse of biological agents’. The company’s headquarters and laboratories were shut down by the Department of Health. Two employees were taken seriously ill and diagnosed as suffering from a hemorrhagic virus, although precise details are not available. Both of the affected workers died.

      Several key members of staff were arrested, but Mangold went to ground and has not been seen since.The company’s reputation was ruined and it ceased trading shortly afterwards.

      Where was Mangold now? At the time of the scandal, in 1991, Mangold had been fifty-three. So, assuming he hadn’t died in the last couple of years, he would now be seventy-four. What would he be doing?

      He read the line about the haemorrhagic virus again. Could it have been Watoto? Officially, there had never been an outbreak of Watoto in the US, but maybe there had, and the authorities had kept it under wraps.

      He closed the laptop lid. Perhaps this was a foolish plan. But what was the alternative? Tomorrow, Harley and DiFranco would drive him to San Francisco and dump him in some cheap motel. He would go mad, sitting around with nothing to do, no way of contributing or helping.

      Well, screw Harley and the BIT and MI6 and the FB sodding I. He wasn’t going to sit around on his arse, not when there was a man out there who needed to pay for what had happened to Stephen. This was his chance, and he wasn’t about to let it slip away.

      He quickly packed again, and as he wound up all the chargers and leads, he noticed that Kate’s BlackBerry charger was among them. Shit. He remembered packing it, and he had forgotten all about it when they separated at the airfield. He hoped they would have a spare charger at the lab so he could contact her.

      Dragging his duffelbag behind him, he slipped out of СКАЧАТЬ